Today in Veronica Mars news: Leighton Meester is out, reading is in

As promised by the return of Christine Lakin’s Susan and the attendant implication that seemingly every single character still living at the end of Veronica Mars will return for the movie, series creator Rob Thomas has confirmed that gossip queen “Carrie Bishop” will also make an appearance. However, this time she won’t be played by Leighton Meester, as Thomas say Meester is “busy doing a different movie during the same time frame on the wrong coast” that we will just go ahead and assume is the sequel, The Roommate: Resident Dead-visor, in which Meester returns to wreak havoc on a new crop of freshmen by killing them with their own, forbidden hot plates.

Instead, Meester will be replaced by another person who can sing and act, Andrea Estrella of the band Twin Sister, whose music Thomas says he “already wanted in the movie” anyway. Thomas didn’t say yet whether this means the third prong of Carrie and Susan’s complicated love triangle, the teacher played by Adam Scott, will also be making an appearance. Thomas also didn’t clarify why he didn’t just solve this whole problem by having Veronica ask if anyone’s seen Carrie, only to have someone reply, “Sorry, you just Meester," though it's probably because this would be a joke funny solely to the very, very immature.

In other Veronica Mars news, Thomas has also announced plans for a two-book series that will pick up after the events of the movie and continue the story from there, without the hassle of making sure actors aren’t busy with something else. The Hollywood Reporter notes that these books could also serve as “a bridge to a potential movie sequel”—especially if you were to use them as piers upon which you laid stacks of money, thus creating a bridge to Rob Thomas’ house.